Two years ago, Sandeep Lodha went to attend his cousin brother’s wedding in Orissa. Having witnessed the exhaustive preparations, he realised that when it came to organising a wedding, nothing much had changed even 15 years after he got married.
“It was the same feeling of being anxious and clueless about which vendor to choose and which venue to narrow down on. There was very little support and the family had to do the running around to get vendors and get them to do the preparations on time,” Lodha, 40, recounts.
But he saw this as an opportunity and led him to found Weddingz.in, an online platform that allows consumers to browse, book, and buy all wedding-related products and services. This includes venues, vendors ranging from wedding photographers to mehendi artists, caterers, make-up artists, decorators and planners. “For example, we have ideas for over 6,000 red lehengas, and over 10,000 images of mehendi designs,” explains Lodha, a Wharton graduate. The website also has a shopping section that goes live in two weeks.
But it wasn’t easy to get vendors on board simply because, says Lodha, “they had not seen the success rate and they would typically start the conversation with ‘many people like you come and go,” he adds. Weddingz operates in 11 cities including Delhi, Pune, Goa, Bengaluru, Jaipur, Jodhpur, and Jaisalmer, and lists over 2,000 venues and vendors each on the platform. And with fresh round of funding of about Rs. 6.7crore from Google’s Ranjan Anandan and others, Weddingz plans to expand in Hyderabad, Gujarat, and Kolkata. “We are planning to launch an app soon too,” Lodha concludes.Details: Weddingz.in —Nandini Kumar